You might have noticed that you are paying more for your groceries than you were a year ago.

The increases are pretty much across the board with coffee showing the biggest hike at 14 percent. Ground beef prices climbed 12 percent while milk is up 11 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

See a more extensive list of food price increases in a story on the cause and impact of food inflation in the business section and on Mlive.com on Sunday.

Food inflation is climbing but hasn't yet approached the inflationary rate of 2008 when food spiked 5.5 percent, the highest jump in decades.

Whether prices will continue to climb is contingent on three factors: prices of raw commodities from cattle to soy beans, fuel prices and global demand which is impacted by the value of the dollar, said Ricky Volpe, a research agricultural economist at the USDA-Economic Research Service.

Right now, all those factors are pushing in the same direction.

“So far, we are starting to approach the levels of 2008 but we aren't there yet,” said Volpe.

Meat prices continue to creep up while vegetables prices are beginning to level out after spiking up.

The up and down of food prices driven by too much sun or too much rain aren't new. But these higher prices might indicate structural inflation which doesn't automatically get smoothed out over time.

In other words, are these higher prices here to stay?

“It's hard to forecast food over a longer period of time," said Volpe, noting that the USDA will release its first forecast for 2012 food commodity prices in July.“If you take the long view, what we are seeing inflation now isn't anything like we saw in the 1980s and the 1970s,” Volpe said.

In the 1970s, food prices rose 8.1 percent spurred on by the oil crisis. In the 1980s, the cost of food rose 4.6 percent. Food inflation slowed to 2.8 percent in the 90s and 2.9 percent in the last decade.